A blog post about how I put this together:

"Halloween: The Night of Terror Ends", A Seamless Edit
fxrant.blogspot.com/2025/10/hall...

Great edit!

Ravenous by Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn. Weird, quirky, melancholic & horrific, and so, so memorable.

The "Be Black, Baby" sequence in Brian De Palma's "Hi, Mom!" was shorter, darker, had more bite, and satirized the highfalutin elite more effectively than The Menu ever hoped to do.

My comments do not apply to all modern action movies. We still have filmmakers with the skill to do it right. However, the big studios need to give these people the space to do their job and stop meddling in everything with their committee-driven approach. That's the end of my uninformed TED Talk.

- Regarding Netflix: They don't require, or even want, your undivided attention. They just want your device to play their content. If there's a boring moment, you can scroll through your phone. If you're in a cinema and there's a boring action scene, you'll get increasingly restless and annoyed.

- Action bullshit: Empty spectacle not in service of the characters or the plot is BOOORING. These scenes also often tend to overstay their welcome. Exception: You want wall-to-wall action? Then you need a giant heap of style like in the John Wick series, where action becomes a cinematic ballet.

- The digital effects crisis: FX companies don't get enough time to deliver excellent work. Instead, the filmmakers or studios don't commit to a shot. Things often have to change at the last minute. It's not the fault of the digital artists. It's bad management.

- Post-postmodern irony. Good action needs tension, high stakes for the characters, and a commitment to the reality of the scene. With every badly placed quip or ironic statement by a character, that tension is gone. We need more emotional sincerity.

Crushed blacks have gone bye-bye. Instead, we've got HDR-captured brownish slush in night scenes.
- Directing action movies seems to be a lost art. Where's the spatial awareness? Filmmakers have forgotten how to properly block a scene.

Oh, I got opinions, man.
When was the last golden age for action movies? I'd say the 1990s and early 2000s.
What are the differences?
- Especially the '90s movies looked gorgeous. It was the last gasp of celluloid filmmaking. Nowadays, many filmmakers don't bother to properly light a set anymore.

What I loved in this scene: Superman suppresses a smile because he would never gloat about the misery of another man. He has empathy even for a crying evil sociopath.

Still, it's a good game. I enjoyed it. It often truly feels like playing an actual Indy movie.
I'm in for a sequel.

The Indy movies were always good at setting up the MacGuffin. Here we are thinking, we're chasing one thing until they pull out another very different religious artifact (linking it with the former) out of their asses at the last minute. That very late revelation felt very unsatisying for me.

Andor often leaves out IMHO critical parts of the story. Even the inciting incident of the whole series - Andor's search for his sister - is abandoned very quickly without adressing it.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy the series immensely. But it is not The Second Coming of Christ.

What about Mon Mothma's dissolving marriage, which has been a major part of her storyline so far? When she decides to make her speech and leave Coruscant, her personal life plays no part in that decision. That's very strange.

I'm loving the overall story (and themes) but not how the plot evolves.

Two examples:
When do we ever see the supression of the Ghorman people that leads to their rebellion? It's only ever vaguely talked about until the massacre. Their life seems pretty fine aside from the empire's presence. (1/2)

In short: No, #Andor is not the best Star Wars thing ever.